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.
accepted. And that was the most impor-
tant decision I made in my life." Soon,
similar courts were being set up through-
out southern Somalia. At a gathering of
Courts leaders in a Mogadishu hotel,
Sharif urged them to unite their efforts.
"In a chaotic place, you need to use force
to stop criminal activities," he explained,
"so it was a natural part of the program."
Sharif was referring to the moment
at which the Islamic Courts became an
armed militia. "So to be involved in poli-
tics in Somalia means going to war?" I
asked him.
'Without a doubt," Sharif said.
I n June, 2006, Sharif and his allies in the
Courts seized Mogadishu, driving
an alliance of warlords from the city. The
defeated warlords had been receiving
covert aid from the C.I.A., because of
American concerns that Somalia had be-
come a haven for terrorists. (The C.lA.
declined to comment on the specifics of
any operations in Somalia, but a spokes-
man said, "Preventing the emergence of
new terrorist safe havens for Al Qgeda
and shutting down those that currently
exist is an obvious priority.") The Courts
imposed Taliban-style prohibitions on
television and recorded music, and insti-
tuted punishments dictated by Sharia.
70 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 14, 2009
.
They also brought security to the capital,
reopening the airport and the seaport.
Commerce rebounded. But by January,
2007, they had been chased out again, by
an Ethiopian invasion force that was en-
dorsed by the U.N. and tacitly supported
by the U.S.
Ambassador Ranneberger told me
that he made two overtures to Sharif dur-
ing this period, and that both had been
spurned. In September, 2006, he and
Sharif met. "I was authorized to tell him
that if the Islamic Courts Union would
eschew terrorism and Islamic extremism
we could work with him," Ranneberger
said. 'We raised the issue of the high-
value targets"-Al Qgeda leaders sought
by America. 'We mentioned them to him
by name, and we told him that we hoped
the Islamic Courts would not associate
with them and, on the contrary, would
take action against them. He listened and
nodded and seemed to understand. But
then he went back to Mogadishu and I
never heard from him again. I guess he
had no traction there."
Six months later, Ranneberger said,
the U.S. offered to help Sharif secure safe
passage as the invading Ethiopian forces
advanced. Sharif refused his help, and fled
across the border to Kenya, where the po-
lice took him into custody. "I met with
him again and asked him to make a state-
ment against extremism," Ranneberger
said. "He said he would, but he didn't."
'When Ranneberger asked Sharif to
denounce the terrorists, this was some-
thing he couldn't do," Hussein Sheikh
Ali, Sharif's liaison to AMISOM, told me.
"Politically, it would have been suicide."
The lC.U. was falling apart, and Sharif
"would have lost the public support of the
Somalis and he could never have come
politically as far as he has come. If they
could have, the Shabaab would have killed
him, too," he said. "It was a year later-
quite late-before he said in public that
the Shabaab are not part of our struggle."
Sharif remained in Kenyan custody
until February, 2007. Then, free to go, he
and his allies gathered in Eritrea, where
they recast themselves as a nationalist re-
sistance movement fighting a jihad against
Western "crusaders." Ethiopià s o ccup a -
tion forces were soon beset by suicide
bombings and lE.D. attacks.
Finally, in U.N.-sponsored peace talks
concluded in Djibouti last January, the
Ethiopians agreed to withdraw, and
Sharif agreed to stop fighting. Ranne-
berger helped broker the deal. He told me
that, in spite of his frustrated early over-
tures, he had always had a "high opinion"
ofShariE ("I think he has a vision, is com-
mitted, and is a reasonable individual who
wants to have a stable Somalia.") Soma-
liàs Parliament, its number doubled by
the addition of Sharif's representatives,
voted for a new government. Sharif won.
Before Sharif could consolidate his
forces, the Shabaab declared war on him.
His old allies had opposed any negotiated
settlement. Two weeks after Sharif as-
sumed the Presidency, the Shabaab sent
suicide bombers into the AMISOM base in
Mogadishu, killing eleven people. Sheikh
Hassan Dahir Aweys, a veteran Somali ji-
hadi who had been Sharif's senior partner
in the Courts, merged his Hezbul Islam
militia with the Shabaab and became its
"spiritual leader." He vowed to continue
the war until Sharia law was declared and
all "foreigners and apostates" had left So-
malia. Osama bin Laden called upon the
world's Muslims to support the Shabaab.
D uring my stay at Villa Somalia, a run-
ning joke among Sharif's aides was
that I was their special guest under house
arrest. It had been only a few weeks since
the French intelligence agents were ab-